[Elecraft] COntest free zones

[Fred Jensen]

Actually, entire bands have been declared "contest-free" by general 
agreement among hams, worldwide.  30, 17, and 12 meters have been 
contest-free from their beginnings in 1979.  30 is a lot like 40, albeit 
CW/RTTY/Digital-only for most of the world except Region 1 south of the 
equator in places.  17 behaves a lot like 20, and 12 is a pleasant 
mixture of 15 and 10, often open when 10 isn't these days.  The Summits 
On The Air crowd [QRP in the field] is slowly increasing usage on these 
WARC bands.  I'd venture a guess that if additional HF bands were ever 
to be authorized, we make them contest-free too by agreement between all 
of us.

When the 60 meter channels came along, they too are contest-free, and 
there's no contesting in the allocations below 160, although ERP limits 
at 137 KHz and likely around the Holy Frequency if that ever happens 
puts a damper on contesting there anyway. :-)

All of our allocations are shared, both in the frequency domain and in 
the time domain, no one has claim to any frequency.  Admittedly, there 
are those who don't believe that, but if you got there first and it was 
empty, you have the right to use the frequency.  Intentional 
interference is prohibited although you'd never know that in the 
14230-14236 range.

Even The Old Man was complaining about "Rotten QRM" well before anyone 
at Elecraft was born.  All in all, I think we share the bands pretty 
well.  Contests do have the distinct advantage of really populating 
bands that otherwise would give regulators and those coveting yet more 
spectrum the impression that our bands are unused.  And yes, the ARRL 
Operating Manual was separated from the Handbook when operating became 
more complex and with more choices.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013
- www.cqp.org

On 3/21/2013 1:21 PM, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
>
>> It would be helpful to have a small section of the bands “off
>> limits” for contesting on the CW-data and SSB segments of each band
>> in areas that General/Tech class people or higher could use during
>> the “tests”.
>
> You've got to be kidding - particularly on 80/40 meter CW and data.
> With the most recent "land grab" by phone there is less than 50 KHz
> for US data operations.  On 40, the area between 7100 and 7150 is
> almost completely void of CW/RTTY contest activity even in CQWW -
> the most crowded of all contests.
>
>> even if ARRL doesn’t care anymore. (They no longer put the “Operating
>> an Amateur Station” chapter in the “Handbook” anymore!)
>
> That's because it has been expanded to an entire book:
>      The ARRL Operating Manual (now in the 10th Edition)
> http://www.arrl.org/shop/ARRL-Operating-Manual-10th-Edition/
>